Our Environment

June 13th, 2017 by Giangiacomo Bravo

During the Earth week, the English teacher asked all the kids in my son’s class to write some reflections concerning the current state of the environment. I discovered that (besides a few grammar mistakes) my fourteen-year-old son can write better than me! I post his essay below, so you’ll judge by yourself.

Our Environment

It’s more than 50 years since scientists has started talking about environmental threats caused by the increasing amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These reflect heat radiation from the earth causing it to get warmer. This is called global warming. In this essay I want to discuss why it scares me and what you can do to avoid it getting too bad.

Whatever you say or think, global warming does exist. It’s impossible to deny the increase in temperature, drought and extreme weather conditions. You can’t even deny that it’s humans that are causing it. If you close your eyes and pretend that everything is normal you won’t be achieving anything but waiting until or planet becomes a lot worse.

The main reasons for letting out greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are fossils fuel being burned in cars and industries, forest being cut down or burned and cattle emitting methane. An important reason for such emissions increasing is the massive increase in the number of humans on Earth. More humans means more cars, more industries producing objects for the humans and more forest being cut down for growing crops or methane emitting cattle.

If you think that the greenhouse effect will only affect nature and not humans you are incredibly wrong. Increase in greenhouse gases causes a higher average temperature on the planet. This is especially important in areas close to deserts where a tiny increase in temperature can cause enough drought to destroy the whole vegetation. This does not only affect the animals in that area, all the humans living there will have to move or die. This will affect the people on the higher latitudes as well where incoming people will increase the population and push to the limits those countries resources as well. After a while, the planets temperature may become that high that sea water evaporates and dramatically increase the amount of greenhouse gases and therefore the temperature on earth. The earth will then face a new mass extinction which will eliminate most if not all the life on earth.

After having read the text above you might be thinking “This is horrible! Why aren’t all the politicians doing anything?!”. In that case it might be good to take a look at yourself. Who is eating methane emitting cattle? Who drives cars? Who buys objects made from cutting down forest? Who is making the population grow? Of course politicians can forbid cars, meat and reproduction. But who is not voting for politicians which are saying that you need to have an a little worse life for saving the environment in the future?

The answer is everyday people like you. It’s up to people to save the environment. And if the planet experiences another mass extinction caused by humans, well it’s the people’s fault.

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Governments, businesses and civil society together with the United Nations have started to mobilize efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Agenda by 2030. Universal, inclusive and indivisible, the Agenda calls for action by all countries to improve the lives of people everywhere.